What if We All Showed Up for a Climate Disaster That Didn’t Happen?

We’re in the process of committing possibly the greatest waste of resources in human history

James Bellerjeau

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4 min read

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Jul 7

Are you being led down the proverbial path? | Image James Bellerjeau

If the world was coming to an end because of climate change, you’d expect there to be some impact on GDP growth, right?

After all, the destruction of the planet and the death of everyone on it by fires, flooding, and superstorms seems like it would create a little damage to the bottom line along the way.

Hold that thought.

Because he’s one of the good politicians, President Biden signed an executive order on Climate-Related Financial Risk that directed work across the Federal Government to create “consistent, clear, intelligible, comparable, and accurate disclosure of climate-related financial risk.”

That was in 2021, and this year two agencies (the Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget) released a honking big white paper discussing the impact of climate change on U.S. finances.

It’s a thorough study.

They discuss what might happen with GDP growth and it is eye-opening:

You might need to look closely — CEA-OMB Whitepaper

As the Wall Street Journal sums up this conclusion: “In other words, if the average annual GDP growth rate is 1.5% for the next 80 years, the economy would grow 232%. A 2% climate-change effect would reduce the growth to 225%.”

Quickly, kill all the children to prevent some kind of disaster!

“Well, don’t get snarky, James. What about the debt-to-GDP ratio? Maybe the looming crisis reveals itself there.”

All right. Here’s how that looks:

You can see it, right? CAN’T YOU? | CEA-OMB Whitepaper

Here, I think we’ll let the white paper authors speak for themselves on the truly staggering impact of global warming on our debt:

Debt to GDP under the low global emissions scenario is…